Electra and Other Plays
Five of Euripides' boldest and most moving tragedies,all focussing on strong female characters Written during a period overshadowed by the fierce struggle for supremacy between Sparta and Euripides' native Athens, these five plays are haunted by the shadow of war - and in particular its impact on women. In Electra the children of Agamemnon take bloody revenge on their mother for murdering their father after his return from Troy, and Suppliant Women depicts the grieving mothers of those killed in battle. The other plays deal with the aftermath of the Trojan War for the defeated survivors, as Andromache shows Hector's widow as a trophy of war in the house of her Greek captor, and Hecabe portrays a defeated queen avenging the murder of her last-remaining son, while Trojan Women tells of the plight of the city's women in the hands of their victors.
Euripides (c.485-406 BC) was already a controversial figure in his own lifetime, regarded as a 'clever' poet, associated with philosophers and intellectuals. He is thought to have written 92 plays, only 18 of which survive. John Davie was born in Glasgow in 1950, and educated at Glasgow University and Balliol College, Oxford. Dr Richard Rutherford was born in Edinburgh in 1956 and has been tutor in Greek & Latin Literature at Christ Church College, Oxford, since 1982.
Author: Euripides
Format: Paperback, 320 pages, 130mm x 198mm, 223 g
Published: 1998, Penguin Books Ltd, United Kingdom
Genre: Drama Texts, Plays & Screenplays
Five of Euripides' boldest and most moving tragedies,all focussing on strong female characters Written during a period overshadowed by the fierce struggle for supremacy between Sparta and Euripides' native Athens, these five plays are haunted by the shadow of war - and in particular its impact on women. In Electra the children of Agamemnon take bloody revenge on their mother for murdering their father after his return from Troy, and Suppliant Women depicts the grieving mothers of those killed in battle. The other plays deal with the aftermath of the Trojan War for the defeated survivors, as Andromache shows Hector's widow as a trophy of war in the house of her Greek captor, and Hecabe portrays a defeated queen avenging the murder of her last-remaining son, while Trojan Women tells of the plight of the city's women in the hands of their victors.
Euripides (c.485-406 BC) was already a controversial figure in his own lifetime, regarded as a 'clever' poet, associated with philosophers and intellectuals. He is thought to have written 92 plays, only 18 of which survive. John Davie was born in Glasgow in 1950, and educated at Glasgow University and Balliol College, Oxford. Dr Richard Rutherford was born in Edinburgh in 1956 and has been tutor in Greek & Latin Literature at Christ Church College, Oxford, since 1982.